COWON X9 4.3-Inch 16GB Touch Screen Video MP3 Player (White)

I am confused as to how the sound from this excellent product could be rated as poor. It is the only player that I know of that gives me the flexibility to change sound settings on the fly. My music and audio files vary so much that I have several settings saved for the optimal listening experience. I listen to audio at my bedside as I fall a sleep. Spiritual content here is needed to be crystal clear. That's one setting. Some old music is in need of enhancement, so I need another setting (user defined and saved as user 1,2, 3, or 4).The feature that is most useful is the ability to have LONG play times. Also, the rather large interface is wonderful for me and easy to navigate. The only advice I would give is to purchase a 3 year protection plan. You will regret it if you don't, Been there. Done that. But I keep coming back to Cowon as the best for my needs. It is large and rather heavy, but this also is makes it easy to handle and stable for my needs. I have a belt clip pouch meant for tools with a Velcro closer and this is perfect for me to access it fast. But it will also fit in my chest/shirt pocket. Love it!

This is my first Cowon product and I have to say I am disappointed in it. I was looking for a player that can last a long time so when I am out hiking, I can have something to listen to when I am in my sleeping bag. And I don't have access to power. Well.... this has an awesome battery life. And the sound is good. And the response on the touchscreen is almost like the response on a ipod or iphone. Which is amazing considering this is a resistive touchscreen (small air pocket in the screen). Samsung galaxy and ipods are conductive screens so they respond with the lightest touch. Now the problems showed up very quickly with the Cowon player. Soon it wasn't responding very well. I would have to press a little harder for a response. And days later when I would try to select a song, the player thought I selected a song located at a different part of the screen. And navigating around on the player would just get frustrating. Just imagine if like on an iphone, when the keyboard shows up, you hit the letter "O" and it types "T". You hit "K" and it types "F". The Cowon couldn't figure out where I was pressing. And a week later it couldn't register any pressing on the screen. And at that point the Cowon is worthless. Even with actual physical buttons which still work, you can't select an album to listen to.Now I was within my warranty period. I got an RMA number from Cowon, and sent it in. And a few weeks later I got it back. Free of charge. They fixed the screen, so it works good..... so I thought. I can navigate the menus almost perfectly. But on smaller menus, anything located in the bottom right of the screen does not work. I initially thought that I could go to "Screen Calibration" and make it work. HA!!! Screen calibration setting is a joke. The screen calibration is to calibrate the user. It puts an arrow pointing to a square in each corner the size of a couple pixels. And you HAVE TO touch those tiny lite up pixels for it to continue. Well.... with a screwed up screen, I nearly couldn't touch those areas. The bottom right one I tried. I just about pulled out a sewing needle to jab the bottom right corner to get the Cowon player to register the pixel I am hitting.So..... even after sending it back to Cowon to have it fixed... they couldn't fully fix it. That is how bad of a product this is. And I would be happier if Cowon would acknowledge this. And maybe designed a booklet cover that would protect the sensitive touchscreen. I would buy it. Because now I know that any weight on the touchscreen, and the pocket of air escapes and the touchscreen is rendered useless. And at around $200 it should last a lot longer. And should last more than 6 months before being fixed. Not buying Cowon again.

Pros:- Pretty good audio. I am still playing around with the EQ configurations and different sets of headphones, but the audio quality is pretty high. I only play FLAC on the device. I got it because I wanted an audio enthusiast level experience and I would say it delivers.- Battery life is astounding. I've never really had to put it in for a dedicated charging session. I just plug it in when I add files (which has been about once daily) and the battery meter has never budged. I probably use it about an hour a day. I've been using it for about two weeks.- Feels solid. The plastic body has a soft texture to it that is nice to the touch and doesn't pick up fingerprints.Cons:- It does lock up. I tried to play a FLAC file that may have had a corrupted or non-standard header on it. The GUI became immediately unresponsive. I tried to plug it into the laptop to prompt the sync menu but it didn't work. I tried to hard reboot it by pressing the audio up and down keys at the same time. Now the thing is unresponsive with the screen off. It is "on" because when I plug it into the laptop it makes the chime like a USB device is connecting. I read online that someone had a similar issue and just let the battery run all the way out, plugged it in for a charge, and it booted back up. It looks like I'll be waiting for that to happen now. I guess that makes the battery life a con? :P* UPDATE * - It was a 4800Hz FLAC file that locked it up. I ran it through media monkey conversion just to make sure it was clean and it did the same thing. Luckily, I had just plugged it into USB after the battery had run out. I was able to let the battery drain quickly and get it to boot again. Also, the letting the battery drain works. I didn't try until 3 days later, so I don't know exactly how long it too.- I'm not a fan of proprietary connectors. A standard USB cable would have been nice.Quirks:- This isn't your smartphone's touchscreen. It is functional, but it will take a minute to re-adjust to 1997 level touchscreen performance.- The interface isn't straight forward. Again, it's functional, just not immediately intuitive. You will spend a little bit of time learning it. I had to, at least once, manually tell it to update the library.Other:- I bought the x9 case. It's not quite a hard case and not quite a gel case. It has a slight yellowish tinge that reminds me of plastics from the 70's for some reason. You don't get a good feel for if you press the power button through it. The other buttons are fine, though. You get a satisfying, small tactile feedback that lets you know you pressed it.- I got the screen protector. It's just a screen protector. It didn't change the performance of the touchscreen and was easy enough to install if you have done a few before on other devices.- I haven't had the USB cable issue others have reported. I push mine in until it clicks and it just works. I don't have to push it abnormally hard and nothing feels loose or cheap.- I haven't had the 64bit OS problem one person reported. I have used it with Win7 and Win8, both 64 bit with no issues.- I bought a 64gig micro SD card, but haven't really used it yet. I put it in the device knowing it was formatted exFAT expecting to be able to format it to FAT32 in the device. I found no option to do so. When I plugged the x9 into my Win8 machine with the 64gig card formatted exFAT it showed up as 28gig. I was about to format the card to FAT32 on my linux machine and put it back in the device but the x9 locked up before I was able to perform that experiment. I guess I'll find out if it will support all 64gig cards after the battery discharges and I can boot it again.- My rating reflects that I read reviews before purchase and was expecting this might happen. If this blindsided me I would probably be upset.- With a solid firmware at this price point I would probably give it 5 stars.

Al principio la interfaz no es muy intuitiva y el touch no es muy responsivo, hay que agarrarle la técnica, tampoco tiene Bluetooth. Estando consciente de estas deficiencias me parece que es un reproductor de música que vale mucho la pena por la excelente calidad de sonido que reproduce y por las vastas opciones de ecualización. Se recomienda usar audífonos de gama media-alta para apreciar al full su sonido.

Wanted to love this device - the sound is extraordinary. Wide sound stage, big dynamic range (no system noise at all during quiet passages), acoustics of where something recorded coming through, separation of instruments very clear. Fantastic. And even after 2 days battery still said 100%!BUT:Proprietary Cowon USB cable drove me crazy - hard to insert. And once in hard to keep in, and to maintain connection. Would not lock in the way standard USB cables do.Resistive screen a PITA - really need fingernails to tap. Or long presses with pad of the finger.Documentation should be better - you have to know the difference between MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) or MSC (Mass Storage Class).If you use MTP - the Windows Standard - your album cover art gets rejected. And then you have no way of knowing which album is which without clicking through. But if you use MSC to get your album covers, then your playlists don't transfer. Arghh.So if you can live with the screen, the cable, and don't use playlists - then this could be the MP3 player for you.Me - I am looking at the Cowon J3 which has the resistive screen with better resolution apparently, 65 hours battery, and better USB cable.